RiHa Orchestra Organ and analog mono synth from 1978
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- čas přidán 25. 08. 2024
- Steve Christie demonstrates the enigma which is the Riha Orchestra organ, built in Holland in 1978.
RiHa part 2: • RiHa Orchestra Organ P...
Bonus peek inside: • RiHa Orchestra Organ P...
Filmed and Edited by Louisa Revolta
Recorded and Mixed by Steve Christie at Vintage Keys Studio
Music by Steve Christie.
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Video and Soundtrack are Copyright Vintage Keys Records / Steve Christie
The font is called "Davida", designed by Louis Minott in 1965, and named after his son David. Or so the Internet tells me.
Thank you! Fantastic!
this font has 60s hippie vibe to me
@@keyhoarder I'd say it ultimately takes inspiration from the fonts of the "Art Nouveau" era which often had little extensions like shoots and tendrils of plants, a lot of the hippy poster art revived the styles of that era.
Amazing that something this complex can be virtually forgotten and so lightly documented. Some of the organ sounds, coupled with the fast Leslie, sound like Alan Haven.
Yes 100% Haven esc!
I remember this organ in the late 70s - was quite prone to setting on fire! That's possibly why there aren't many left. The harp section is an arpeggio.
An organ with a propensity to catch fire sounds jolly exciting.
Better play some The Crazy World of Arthur Brown on it then, as long as you can! :)
why did it catch fire?
@@audiodood Some of the early ones had a suspect power supply and the build quality of the electrics/boards was poor.
I'm cracking up imagining a Con club full of bewildered old colonels and blue rinse octogenarians, sitting eyes wide in shock as this infernal machine blasts out harsh organ chords and synthesised wailing souls, with you standing behind it wearing a cape which is inexplicably billowing behind you indoors.
I must do this, and soon!
I have had many a dream about coming across organs such as this with crazy inbuilt small key synths. They always sound incredible in my REM Sleep state. Great to see they sound as good in reality as they do in my dreams. Fantastic vid as ever. Big up the Riha!!!
Yes I have the same dreams - I did wonder if I was just hallucinating when I first saw/heard it
Wow that thing is awesome! It’s pretty cool that it has a solo synth with glide. I still wish I had my Yamaha e-50 with its dual polysynths (and bass synth), there’s just something special about late 70’s organs with synths in them.
My Dad had one of them, incredible instrument
What a wonderful machine.. the sounds and the colours all match.. man alive .. you gotta love that leslie sound. I suggest that you pull your finger out and mend it properly... 😂😂😂👍 Great great content from my favourite channel.. thankyou..
Your pronunciation is right! Somewhere in 1979 I got my first electronic organ, a RiHa Festivo, the simplest model of the range at the time. In the music store (Johan de Heer in Rotterdam, the Netherlands) they also had this top-of-the-range model: the Orchestra. I played a bit on it and what intrigued me the most was the synthesizer. I asked a salesman how it worked and he demo'd some sounds. I was blown away! very nice organ sound also, and, as you mentioned, quite something to behold! Great catch Steve!
P.S. I guess the "Duty" slider changes the width of the pulsewave.
That is an awesome beast! I hope you get all the problems ironed out. Great sound though!
Wow, your delightful tunes are the ones that bring those machines back to life.
Thank you!
@@VintageKeysStudiolook for dendrites .
When I first got my Hammond the tech had to clean the scanner and reverb tank because of these extremely fine metallic particles that made the organ not work properly.
Wish you well getting this unit sorted.
wow that synthesizer is amazing!
where you from? Southampton hahaha
The font you pointed out at the start is Davida, I have a vintage embroidery instruction booklet that uses it as well
You know, I think my mum had that same booklet too!
Such a deal! One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Lovely sounding unit. 🎧As always I really love your finds and presentations.
Hello Steve ,what a fantastic instrument by 1978 standards that is able to overcome many of XXI Century ones !!
This organ seems to be a Retro Sounddesign Wonder Machine. Looking forward to the second part. Thanks for sharing this awesome presentation :-)!
Wow that thing is pretty amazing. Great find. I'm sure you'll get all the bits working the way they should, or better
Love your content!!
Thank you!!
Incredible!! What a machine!
I used to own this exact same organ! It's an absolute beast, but great sounding. I bought back in the late 90's for £100. Well worth it, years of fun. It eventually got very crackly and the lights started flickering and making strange noises (unwanted strange noises) as it was actually very good at making strange noises, that's why I liked it! You can get a dead ringer for The Clangers from it as well. Anyway, I eventually gave it away to a local band who could repair it and use it better than I could. Thanks for the video and for your channel, which I just discovered recently. Very enjoyable to watch. The Harpsicord video had me in hysterics! Brilliant. Keep up the good work. 👍
*After The Concert - Wilma Grobben - RiHa Orchestra (1080p HD 320kbps)* was just posted on The Organ Jukebox channel. I love the voicing on this organ. Rich tones and good ensemble. Excellent look to this organ as well. Very 'Elke meets Farfiza'
Cheers yes we love it
dude this thing is crazy man!
Man, you are the best !!! love your uploads. Don't get the time to view enough CZcams !!!
I appreciate that!
Very cool! That Harp section looks like it might be an arpeggiator for the monosynth.
That would be my guess too.
Very interesting.
I love your little nod to Tubular Bells!.
Great content from the good folks at VKS.
Cheers - I used to have an eastern European copy of Tubular Bells, and all the spine of the LP it said ‘Tabular Balls’
@VKS
Hahahaha,,,,,,,that's about right!.
We'll put that down as "last" in translation.
Great score on your new organ/synth, although I can't imagine where you find the time to maintain all that gear, you need to get yourself an apprentice.
@@keiranbradley3238 thank you for ‘Tabular Balls’! Much appreciated!
@VKS
You're very welcome.
24:55 - that reminds me of the synth sound Queen used for Ming the Merciless' theme on the Flash Gordon soundtrack
It is indeed originally an organ that was manufactured in the Netherlands. RiHa was a combination of the founder's firstname, Hans and his wife Riet I think it was hence RiHa with capital letters. Later he began manufacturing Johannus church organs that are still built today. And again Johannus is actually his 'formal' name that is often abbreviated to Hans and that he gave to his organs. These Johannus organs are expensive but very high quality sounding organs and often find their way as backup organs in churches.
Thanks very much for this - very informative! :)
Delightful
Thanks for this video. I picked up a Riha syntone on the curb (yes for free) last week. No place for it, so it sits in the garden.😅 It is largely similar to yours,But cant find any documentation on it, nor on Riha! And I do llive in the country where it was produced.
It’s a largely forgotten name - we now have two Riha Orchestras (one full organ and one stand alone synth)
Haunting tones.
Nothing quite beats sitting at such an instrument. A feeling I don’t get from cubase and multitudes of vst’s. Enveloped by buttons n sliders. Love it.
Lack of space is a problem fr organ collectors. I currently have 3 (son to be 4) reed organs plus 2 digitals, a ouple of digital pianos, an 1821 Broadwood square piano and a number of other keyboards & synths crammed into my small house! Welcome to the club!
Amazing bir a kit that wun. 😍
Had one of these in the 80s. Harp works via footswitch hidden in volume pedal aperture.
Hi Brian sharp was a demostrator for Riha as the organ shops stocked them I saw him at the poligon Hotel Southampton well attended as he made it talk the Orchestra was £4.400 and they sold the one he used on the night for £4.000 special offer Brian had a standing ovation also they had it connected to two Leslie speaker cabinets amazing sound !!
I remember the polygon hotel!
31:40 Getting a Dr Phibes vibe from that synth melody layered on top of the organ
kickass
Fantastic machine. Similar, but would hesitate to say, better than the Yamaha D85, with the mini key synth, although this synth seems way more capable. I want one! A true unicorn. Fabulous content as always.
Home entertainment organ from the '70's. I remember similar models from other manufacturers. I guess the synth section dded a range of alternative solo sounds, etc. Good to see it being restored. I'd guess the slo chord function is tied in to the automatic accompaniments, and adds notes from the harmony below the note you play on the solo manual. (The assumption being that players just played a single-note melody. I was more into classical organs & a bit of theatre organ then. Hope you do manage to get everything working in time. Keep up the good work.
Cheers Tony! :)
Beautifull haunting sound. For progressive Rock
Thanks very much. We’re doing another video on this soon…
You can't beat a 2 speed Leslie!
29:13 almost playing vincent de moor - fly away. the sound works for it too
I don’t know that, I’ll have to have a listen
@@VintageKeysStudio czcams.com/video/81W8f5OinXM/video.html skip to about 2 minutes for the melody (just linking that so you don't find the terrible version that shows up first on youtube and think i have bad taste 😇)
I've been wanting to comment on this but forgot to. One of the great organs of that time. IT even looks 70ties funky in its blazign colour palete! And all this from a Dutch firm! Who woudl have thought. I didn;t and I am Dutsch myself. I own one but still have to come around to refurbisihing it. Did you get any further with it. A new video woul dcertainly be appreciated. The harp function is the arpeggiator control section. I own a bad photocopy of a dutch user manual. If you want I can translate that harp bit or anything else you still haven't figured out.
Thank you very much! Yes please, we would love a translated copy of the Harp section. We will give you honorary member status in return! Send us an email via our website
Very nice - almost like a poor man's GX-1 :)
Solo chord plays chords on upper manual with one finger dictated by chord played on lower manual
Wow what a lovely phasey chorusey sound that thing has, kind of reminds me of something that Rick Wakemen might have used in one of his solo albums like Journey To The Centre Of The Earth with an added bonus of a little lead synth manual he wouldn't need to reach over and play his Moog. The harp looks and sounds like it might be an arpeggiator. 17:49 D bottom D on the bottom manual is slightly depressed and won't stop makind E flat sigh, if you lift it up he might be happy and stop moaning.
Yes the harp was explored in a later video! :) I think the stuck note was sorted a month or so afterwards when I took the thing to pieces again. There was a bent piece of screening metal behind the keys, pushing on one of them
Has a bit of a Dream Machine thing, it sounds really great. Kubrickian also.
Also never heard of this producent before, the organ section sounds great, nice sine waves and leslie. Also the design is wonderful. I assume it may be as expensive as dutch car from the 70s DAF 600 ;)
The "harp" - maybe something like arpeggiator, similar to the omnichord ? (up/down/4/2octaves?)
Just checking ebay, the record and/or cassette demonstration by Brian Sharp is there. Would love to do an album exclusively made with it. Please, more content on it.
You killed it 😂
Ive not seen one in the states ever for sale.
"It's kind of a nightmare." Hahaha! Amazing! That thing is bonkers!
i wonder if it was based on something from the big producers - like these big Yamaha Electones with both the foot manual and smaller third synth section.
That thing is crazy, I want one!
Duty cycle just means pulse width.
Thank you
The pots needs some love... they want some contact spray... :-)
It also need a recap... when you turned it off and back on again you can clearly hear that some caps are charging back up...
The pots all need replacing, they have been sprayed to death and there’s millions of caps in this thing. Life is sometimes too short - especially now as we have two of these in the studio!!
"Two slightly distorted guitars" 😉
I set mine on fire with a witches broom
The lesly sounds rather good, is it a real one build in, or is it electrically simulated?
It’s a real one - unusual design which will be shown soon in our part 2 video!
i wonder how the reverb was made. It doesn't sound like spring one, but its too early for the digital technology
It is a spring reverb - two of them in fact! - there is a part two to this organ coming up very soon!
@@VintageKeysStudio wow, it sounds deep and spacious for a spring reverb. Fascinating how unknown local producer made such Behemoth.
What musical genre is he playing on the keyboard? Ive been looking for type beats like these
I can play stuff like this off the top of my head for days - get in touch via our website if you want some stuff recorded! :)
The Riha Orchestra is a Dutch organ , the only dutch company was Eminent.
I have here a famous organist Brian Sharp hé played the Riha organ... czcams.com/video/xFMp8RmvMU0/video.html
24.54 sounds like Flash Gordon, is Gordon alive ?
That is the worst Michael Cain impersonation nice instrument though.
I’m pretty sure that was Michael Caine.
This is obviously a fake. The presets do actually sound somewhat like what they're named after. This should not be the case with 70s keyboards 😉
Haha
great sounds ! Guess it's an unknowned great "organ" similar to the famous GX-1 by Yamaha ...
You are right. Very similar.
Bit of a tuning issue between the synth and organ? Or is it my ears?
Edit: you’re on it!
I was playing it detuned on purpose, it does tune up perfectly later on in the video :)
@@VintageKeysStudio Sorry, I realised that and edited my comment! My bad.